My friend Dennis(another masa member) has very low levels of coraline in his tank....even though the system is over 1.5years old.....

My tank has relatively med/high level of coraline growth cos i was lucky with some good rock in the inital startup......my experiment was :

I took a fliter sponge relatively large in size(6x6x6cm) and placed in inside my sump opposite an exit pipe of high flow exitiing from my 2nd skimmer.....it took abt 2 months but with daily dosing i have managed to grow coraline on the sponge and allow it to spread over most of and inside the sponge......

Now my theory is if coraline : is a bigger algae than hair algae (cos coraline can grow over hair algae but hair algae cant grow over coraline) then in theory if i give Dennis this sponge to place in his tanks sump in a med flow area returning back to DT then in a month or two he should see more coraline attaching to his rock provided he doses a similar level of Kalk to maintain his calcium levels .......

How off is my theory..?????? will this work ...i am curious to try

AdSGuest

Shiks. Another very important parameter overlooked is phosphate. With high Phosphate levels in a tank, Coralline algae will struggle to thrive.
He has to get his P04 levels down and keep his water parameters as follows :
Ca : 380-420
Alk : 6.5 - 8.5 DKH
Mg : 1350
Po4: <0.1

Corraline does not like strong direct lighting so this could be one of the reason why he is not noticing any significant growth in his DT. What lighting is he running Shiks.

Click to expand...

I get what u saying lighty but i belived that if u had high coraline levels and a stable tank then coraline would take prescedence as the dominant algae in the tank provieded the levels were stable

He dosnt have high PO4 levels ATM as far as i know just has a prob leeching coraline growth as oppossed to hair algae growth......my thinking was that the algaes reacted the same way as a macro / micro algae relationship that if the dominant algae is fed properly then the micro algae would slowly dissapate....but i might be very wrong....also hair algae isnt the prob....it just trying to get coraline to attahc and to sustain ......my experiment was to give him this sponge to keep under low lighting in the sump and to dose enough kalk to kinda leech it in to the water slowly and hopefully lech onto his rock long term??????

i also found out yest that he hasnt changed the one out of his two MH bulbs for like 2 years (one bulb was replaced last year some time) since he got the system running......does this matter....i run T5s so i aint too knowledgable abt this